Swithin
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Posts posted by Swithin
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I'm a true classic film fan. I respect good acting and particularly the contributions of the character actors. But I find the star-worshipping that goes on here sometimes to be frankly creepy.
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Walter Huston's rendition of "September Song" is truly lovely. Huston played Pieter Stuyvesant in the 1938 Broadway musical Knickerbocker Holiday, in which he introduced the Kurt Weill/Maxwell Anderson song.
Regarding John Huston, I actually think he was an overrated director, particularly early in his career. I enjoy Maltese Falcon but don't think it's a great film. IMHO, Huston matured very well, making two of his best films very late in his career: Wise Blood and The Dead, the latter with a brilliant screenplay by his son Tony Huston. Of course The Dead's directorial style seems more John Ford than John Huston!
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Neleta -- Steffi Duna in Anthony Adverse (1936)
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Well I think it has become more scientific. Each network does its own work, so that they don't all declare the same state at the same time. But they seem to have got it right this year. And the guy at The Times -- Nate Silver -- seems to have picked every state correctly (pending the outcome in FL). It has become a science, and I believe in science.
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Oh NO! I hadn't even noticed when I criticized the Oscar schedule, that NBNW was scheduled yet again! I had stopped complaining about that for a while, but placed as it is in the midst of a truly unimaginative month, I can't control myself!
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TCM has shown a great deal of imagination on most occasions. But you have only to look at lists of all the films nominated for Oscars throughout Oscar's history to see that they could have programmed a far more imaginative series this year. I'm a programmer, I know that.
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You are way off topic. I think this is one time the moderator might encourage that, since it has hijacked comments about the unimaginative programming for Oscar time.
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I find this so depressing. If an Oscar series MUST be done, there could have been so many imaginative ways to go, to show rarely seen films that have been nominated. For example, King of the Zombies was nominated for best music score in 1942! There's a wealth of interesting nominees that have never been shown on TCM, or that have only been shown rarely.
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*Top Billed wrote: "Because the Oscars are held every year, we can expect the 31 Days of Oscar on TCM every year."*
I don't think that your conclusion needs to follow (and I certainly don't think it SHOULD follow). We don't have to expect an Oscar series every year, unless TCM is under some obligation to the industry to do that. I do know, as someone who has produced more than 100 programs a year -- live and on film and tape -- that nothing is easier than recycling and putting the same product in a different series into which it also fits.
I expect more creativity from TCM, and we're not getting it in this year's Oscar series.
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"CITIZENS!!!... Vote..."
Blanche Yurka as Madame De Farge in A Tale of Two Cities (1935)
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"CITIZENS!!! Vote...."
Blanche Yurka as Madame De Farge in A Tale of Two Cities (1935)
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My response after a very cursory glance at the Oscar schedule: ho-hum. Do they have to do this every year? I wish TCM would show The Day of the Locust, a film that, due to its excellence and subject matter, cries out to be shown on TCM. And it was nominated for two Oscars.
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The cultural institution I worked for was rented by the National Board of Review for its awards presentation, 1982 I think it was. I was assigned to James Cagney. Another colleague was assigned to help his wife. The paparazzi were intolerable, desperate to get to Cagney. Lauren Bacall shouted at them, "Why don't you leave him alone, he's an old man!" I have a photograph taken with Cagney and Mona Washbourne, who also received an award that year. I also helped Myrna Loy put her books on that night.
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I had the great pleasure to be James Cagney's bodyguard on a cold winter evening in 1982. He was frail by then but charming and so kind.
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Blore is brilliant. I guess my favorite scene of his might be the "silent...to the grave... and even beyond!!" scene in The Lady Eve, and of course that phone scene. But if you want to see one of his odder roles -- really a kind of surreal version of his usual roles -- check out Shanghai Gesture, in which he plays Madame Gin Sling's money manager.
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I understand your thoughts about Julie. The thing about her, at least based on my impressions, is that she's one of those actresses who have done film and tv to "support" their theater habit. She LOVES doing theater. Although I think she's pretty much retired now, she was also one of those few remaining actresses who even loved touring with plays, after many stars of her stature stopped doing that.
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Robert Morley's son, the late Sheridan Morley, was a friend and colleague of mine on a few projects. He once got me a gig which was very meaningful to me.
I asked Burgess Meredith to write something for a brochure I was working on, related to a series of programs I was producing (and related to something in Burgess' theatrical past). He wrote a great remembrance. In response to my thank-you note, he sent me a present: a CD he had made of Songs of the Gold Rush (unrelated to the project I was working on).
And last but not least, I worked with the wonderful Julie Harris on a program. She is considered, I think, the First Lady of the American Theater, and, TopBilled, not to get back to our old discussion, but I don't think of her as a character actor!
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Nice list! I've had personal connections to three actors on the November list and look forward to the photos and quotes.
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Pallette was one of the greats. I love his line in The Bridge Came C.O.D. He's a very rich man, running to catch a plane that he's hired, and suddenly he stops and says:
"What am I running for? I have 40 million dollars!"
Also love him in The Lady Eve, and just about everything else.
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Who doesn't love Edna May Oliver? I'd love to see a long tribute, with scenes from Pride and Prejudice, David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities, Little Women, Cimarron, and perhaps one of her greatest, Drums Along the Mohawk, as well as full screenings of her starring films.
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*Grave of the Vampire* (1972). Bad vampire rapes woman in graveyard, infant suckles blood from his mother's breast, grows up to be good vampire, who want to stop his father's wicked ways.
Of course, there are sympathetic vampires, like Dracula's Daughter, but she's hardly benign!
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I think there are commercials -- I vaguely remember that from a previous visit. I stay in the same flat with the same cable system each time, so my experiences are consistent. But I'll check when I have time, I'm sort of busy.
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I do know that one of the TCM channels here is called TCM-HD and starts at 8pm. The other seems to run all day. But they seem more like Fox, with a few films shown repeatedly throughout the day.
More soon.
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I'm in London for a while, where tonight TCM is showing Urban Cowboy and Blown Away (several times). I'm on the Sky cable system, I don't know if other UK systems have other TCMs, but I doubt it. The TCM here is not very good.
Edited by: Swithin on Oct 24, 2012 7:07 PM
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I love Oscar Homolka. Wonderful as Uncle Chris -- although he didn't win the Supporting Actor Oscar (he was nominated). He was even good in Mr. Sardonicus.
Classic Character Actors
in General Discussions
Posted
Sara Allgood, one of the greats, was a classical Irish actress (plays by J.M. Synge) who made a great career as a character actress in films, perhaps most notably as the mother in How Green Was My Valley. One of my favorite bits of her work: the crazy "black bottom" dance sequence in Roxie Hart.